Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists' Writings (MIT Press)

Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists' Writings (MIT Press)

Alexander Alberro

Language: English

Pages: 512

ISBN: 0262516640

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub

"Institutional critique" is an artistic practice that reflects critically on its own housing in galleries and museums and on the concept and social function of art itself. Such concerns have always been a part of modern art but took on new urgency at the end of the 1960s, when -- driven by the social upheaval of the time and enabled by the tools and techniques of conceptual art -- institutional critique emerged as a genre. This anthology traces the development of institutional critique as an artistic concern from the 1960s to the present by gathering writings and representative art projects of artists from across Europe and throughout the Americas who developed and extended the genre. The texts and artworks included are notable for the range of perspectives and positions they reflect and for their influence in pushing the boundaries of what is meant by institutional critique. Like Alberro and Stimson's Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology this volume will shed new light on its subject through its critical and historical framing. Even readers already familiar with institutional critique will come away from this book with a greater and often redirected understanding of its significance.